How Is This a Tournament?

Once Aldous was dressed in a formal suit, we made our way to the event.

Towering far above all the surrounding buildings was a giant stadium, right smack in the middle of the city. It looked similar to the stadium at the Wizarding Academy, architecture that was much too advanced in comparison to the surroundings. While the common people's housings were built of simple wood and stone, the stadium was built with however many tons of steel, iron, or whatever metal it was.

It was still only twelve in the morning, or so I assumed since the Sun was far up in the sky and there were no shadows in sight. If it had been the late afternoon or early morning, there would have been a large shadow cast from the silhouette of the stadium.

'Now that I thought of it, I hadn't eaten anything since I awoke.' I thought, as the two of us passed by an entry point.

The entry point was similar to the Magic Knight Academy Campus's entrance, so would that mean this was the Knight Academy or something like that? There was a giant stadium in both the Magic Knight Academy and Wizarding Academy's campus so it was right to assume that this area was also a sort of academy campus.

Either way, it didn't matter. We still had to walk a couple hundred metres before we would reach the stadium.

While there were some people wandering around the campus, they seemed to be here for the same reason as us. All in all, it wasn't too interesting and ever since Aldous put on that suit, he wore on an all too serious and professional expression which made it hard for me to start a conversation.

As we walked silently along the path, I started thinking. Why did Rachel choose to participate? We should be figuring out a way to get back or communicate with her family. Since magic wasn't commonplace in this kingdom, it would make sense that they did not have portals either which brought up the question of how. How will we get back?

From what I could remember in History class, the continent was a horizontal mass of land, like Pangaea; but you know, horizontal. The entire west side of the continent was territory of the Three Human Kingdoms while the other humanoid races lived on the east side of the continent. Starting from the left, was the Kingdom of War, then the Kingdom of Wizardry, and finally the Kingdom of Art. The Kingdom of Art was the kingdom that facilitated trade with the other races while the Kingdom of Wizardry was focused on research. As for what the goal of the Kingdom of War was, I could only guess it had something to do with war. Ah, I've digressed. Basically, the Kingdom of War and the Kingdom of Art were separated by the Kingdom of Wizardry. The best outcome would be that there were portals here and the worst outcome would be us having to travel to the Kingdom of Wizardry and use the portals there.

"Try not to stick out Daniel." Aldous said, interrupting my inner monologue.

I scrunched my eyebrows and looked at him with a "what do you mean?" expression.

He didn't see it since he was still focused on looking straight ahead acting all cool like that. Now that my attention was back on the road, I realized that there were a lot more people in the surroundings. There were even stalls selling food and all of that.

'Woah, was that popcorn? They had that here?'

As I was about to go up to buy some, Aldous grabbed my arm and said with the same serious face, "follow me."

It was strange to be honest. Aldous struck me as the chill guy who was able to accept things even if it were bad news or sounded impossible. The man watched three people that were probably his friends, die. He said he didn't know them, but I could read the fake smile he gave me when I asked this morning. Yet here he was, acting all serious like a professional businessman. Had I been wrong with my initial assessment of him or was it something else?

Either way, once we reached the giant gates of the stadium, he handed over two black tickets to the man in the booth. Instead of giving us a receipt or telling us where to go, he gave a deep ninety degree bow as if we were royalty. Ignoring the bow, Aldous just went up the stairs on the right instead heading through the gates like all the other people.

After giving a slight nod to the respectful guy, I followed Aldous up the stairs. Once we reached the top, I noticed the difference between this stadium and the Magic Tournament's stadium. It was much taller in the fact that there were multiple floors meant to accompany a larger crowd.

As I was inspecting the surroundings, Aldous already went up another flight of stairs.

After going up two more floors, we reached the top floor of the stadium. It was different from the other floors which were just filled with rows of seats. There were already people here, but the thing that was interesting to me was how there was only one row of seats, enough for only fifty people.

Following Aldous, he went up to a man that was completely bald and dressed in a similar attire.

"You're late." The bald man simply said.

Aldous didn't respond but only nodded.

"You and your friend will sit over there." He said, pointing at two of the available seats.

It didn't really matter where we sat since there was only a single row of seats meaning every seat was a front row seat. This floor was definitely a VIP floor because the seats were not ordinary wooden theater chairs, but comfy mini sofa chairs.

As I got in the chair, I looked down at the stadium field where the Martial Championship would take place.

I had to say, being at the top gave the best view since everything was in my sight. But why are there giant trees everywhere? Surely this wasn't a real life reenactment of the hunger games, right?